~ A Compendium of My Inane Ramblings, Photos & Assorted Detritus of Life

Monthly Archives: February 2012

Ryan had Friday the 17th off for President’s Day and since the opportunity for us to go out for lunch together is so rare, we grabbed it. I was craving Asian food and he was craving burgers so he suggested The Aloha Grill (1151 Harry Wurzbach Road San Antonio, TX 78209). He had been there before with some of his fellow soldiers and thought I’d like it so off we went.

There’s an interesting mix of American, Korean, Filipino and Hawaiian flavors on the menu. Ryan ordered the Menehune Burgers, the Aloha Grill’s version of sliders. They come four on a plate and the buns are sweet Hawaiian bread. The meat has a mild teriyaki/Asian flavor which pairs nicely with the sweetness of the buns. There were a number of sides offered but Ryan went with the traditional French fries. He offered me a bite of one of the sliders. Quite good, and, in hindsight, I wish I’d ordered them.

I ordered a dish that I had I hopes for…like I said, I really had a hankering for Asian food. I found a pork and cabbage dish on the menu that sounded like it would meet that craving. Wrong. It was basically just a very bland soup. I love cabbage and mostly just ate all of it out of the soup. Luckily I thought to order Kimchi as a side dish so I did get at least a modicum of Asian flavor. The additional side that came along with the soup and kimchi was an interesting hybrid macaroni/potato salad. I rather enjoyed this salad because most macaroni salads have this intense tangy Miracle Whip/mayonnaise flavor but this one didn’t. If I go back, I’ll MOST DEFINITELY get Ryan’s Menehune burgers…but with kimchi, no boring fries for me!

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Today, after a meeting at Aidan’s school, I decided I wanted Filipino food and lucky for me, there are (or were) a couple of Filipino restaurants in the Randolph area. I was actually supposed to get together with a fellow #foodiemama, Amanda, to eat at Mekeni Filipino Restaurant (Kitty Hawk at Pat Booker) last week. Unfortunately, I had to cancel because I got called to sub but as it turns out, that was a good thing. I drove by today and they’ve closed! Luckily, I knew of another Filipino place nearby from the Asian Festival and headed over. I found the little Tabares Filipino Bakery, Cafe and Market in Randolph Plaza at the intersection of Randolph Blvd. and Pat Booker. I walked in and saw that there’s a market/grocery on the left and a cafe on the right, separated by the cash register/wrap stand. While waiting for my food I learned that there is a Filipino cable channel and that there are over 7000 islands in the Philippines. You learn something new everyday! What I’d like to know is why there’s a little pocket of Filipinos near the AF Base? I know why there are always Koreans near Army posts…do we have an AF presence in the PI?

I ordered what I was familiar with from the Asian Festival, adobo chicken with rice, pancit and lumpia. At the festival it was served as a plated dinner…when they brought it out today I could’ve picked my jaw up off the floor. There was SO much food!!! I’m pretty sure I could have fed my entire family with all the food!!

A quick food lesson:

Adobo, the Spanish word for marinade, sauce or seasoning, is the name of a popular dish and cooking process in Philippine cuisine. Although the name is taken from the Spanish, the cooking method is indigenous to the Philippines. Typically, pork or chicken, or a combination of both, is slowly cooked in vinegar, crushed garlic, bay leaf, black peppercorns, and soy sauce then often browned in the oven or pan-fried afterward to get the desirable crisped edges. (From Wikipedia)

Pancit or pansit is the term for noodles in Filipino cuisine. Noodles were introduced into the Philippines by the Chinese and have since been adopted into local cuisine. Pancit bihon or bijon is the type usually associated with the word “pancit”, very thin rice noodles fried with soy sauce some citrus, possibly with patis (fermented fish sauce), and some variation of sliced meat and chopped vegetables. (From Wikipedia)

Lumpia are pastries of Chinese origin similar to fried spring rolls popular in Southeast Asia. The recipe, both fried and fresh versions, was brought by the Chinese immigrants from the Fujian province of China to Southeast Asia and became popular where they settled in Indonesia and the Philippines. (From Wikipedia)

I immediately dug into the adobo chicken. There were 6-8 pieces of chicken swimming in delicious, tangy gravy. I poured the gravy over the sticky rice and ate it with the chicken and the occasional bite of pancit. The adobo sauce was not overly sour with vinegar flavor. I tend to enjoy flavors on the tangier side, though, so these were right up my alley.

The lumpia (6 for $4!) came with a tasty sort of tangy ketchup-y type sauce. Not quite ketchup but not quite sweet and sour sauce. It was unique and really good. I quite enjoyed the whole meal and I have plenty of everything (except the lumpia, I ate the rest of those while waiting for Aidan to get out of school…oops!) for lunch tomorrow! The whole meal was around $18…not bad for something I’ll get at least two meals out of. If you’re ever out near Randolph AFB or Pat Booker & 1604, give Tabares a shot and say hi to all the sweet little Filipino ladies in there for me! 🙂

Anyone who knows me online, knows that I am a bit of a Twitter-fiend. I’ve become “Twitterpated”, if you will. At last count I have 15,908 Tweets, 949 Followers and I’m following 983 on Twitter. These stats might sound impressive to a Twitter neophyte but believe me, there are people on Twitter with astronomical stats, making mine look like child’s play. Recently, I deactivated my Facebook profile, choosing to focus primarily on Twitter. I’ve found that I can have mature, intelligent conversations on Twitter, whereas on Facebook, it all too often devolves into cyber-bullying and middle-school antics.

Many bloggers that I encounter fall into one of two camps: they’re complete Twitter diehards like myself or they don’t get it and are afraid to dip their toe into the water. That’s where I come in. I’m a certified technology teacher (in 2 states!) and I genuinely enjoy imparting my love and knowledge of technology unto others.

So here we go, Twitter in a nutshell:

1. Everyone that follows you can see everything you type unless you DM (direct message) someone.

2. If you want to direct a comment to someone in particular but not put it in a DM, you type their @twittername somewhere in the tweet. That way the person knows it’s directed to them (but remember, everyone else can see it too).

3. A hashtag is how you search for topics. Like the Grammy Awards for example. Everyone who is tweeting about the Grammys will put #Grammys in their tweets. You can follow all of the tweets about the Grammys by searching #Grammys. Conversely, if you don’t want to see any tweets about the Grammys, you can filter using hashtags as well.

4. Sometimes people use hashtags in funny ways. They’ll say something like “Mick Jagger really should get looser fitting pants. #oldmanmooseknuckle” You probably don’t want to search for that kind of hashtag.

5. Keep it under 140 characters. Spaces count. That’s why you see tweets with grammar errors, spelling errors, etc. If you have to break it up into multiple tweets, do it.

6. To find people, start following someone you know or want to know & see who they follow then start following those people…it’s sort of like a spiderweb.

7. Once you get your feet under you, you might want a way to organize all the Twitter traffic that you’ll be seeing. I’m a fan of Tweetdeck. It’s an app that allows you to arrange your feeds into customizable columns so you can easily see all of the Tweets that are coming in. For example; I have my columns set up left to right as Mentions (those are tweets that specifically mention me), All Friends (that’s my general feed), Direct Messages, and then 2-3 columns of specific searches. You can search hashtags and it will constantly pull tweets with that hashtag and put them in those columns for you. I couldn’t tweet as efficiently as I do without Tweetdeck.

So, anyway, that’s Twitter in a nutshell. If you have any other questions, just let me know, I’ll be glad to answer them!

As a part-time SAHM and part-time substitute teacher, I have a fair amount of time on my hands from day to day. I could spend that time surfing the web, playing on Twitter, Facebook & Pinterest and sleeping (which I’ve done and still do from time to time) or I could do something worthwhile with my time. I decided that since I couldn’t find paying work, that I would occupy myself and give something back by volunteering in the community. Over the holidays I worked at the H-E-B Feast of Sharing event and really enjoyed giving of myself and being involved with the event-goers. This past weekend, I volunteered with the 25th Annual Asian Festival celebrating the Year of the Dragon at the University of Texas – San Antonio‘s Institute of Texan Cultures.

Saturday was a beautiful, sunny, blue-sky day. Not a cloud in the sky, a little breezy but a gorgeous day for a festival. I had a great volunteer job working in the “Command Center” which is the nerve center for the festival. We sat at the loading dock at the ITC and waited for someone, anyone, to call or radio us from elsewhere at the festival and ask for help. Usually it was that they needed something brought to them like ice or drinks or a cart for loading or unloading. Then I or one of my other fellow volunteers would load up and head to wherever they needed us. So, along the way we got to see pretty much the whole festival. All of the vendors, concessionaires, and I got to see a couple of performers inside the ITC while waiting to load up some instruments.

The Command Center also happened to be in a great place to see the acts on one of the outdoor stages so we got to experience nearly the whole festival while we were working. One of the groups performing on the outdoor stage was a Chinese Dragon Dance, in honor of the Chinese New Year and the Year of the Dragon. This dragon was 16 feet long and the staging area was right in front of our table. It was beautiful to watch this team of dancers work together to make this 16 foot dragon move and undulate as if it was a real, living being. They were quite a talented troupe. I was surprised to see what a large and diverse Asian community San Antonio has. After my volunteer shift ended, I was able to partake in some of the WIDE array of Asian street foods that the concessionaires offered for sale in the courtyard. There was something from almost every country in Far East and South Asia that you could think of. Vietnamese, Chinese, Japanese, Indian, Filipino, Pakistani, and even Burmese! I was surprised at that one. I got adobo chicken and pancit from the booth run by Tabares Filipino Market and some sushi from the Sushi Zushi booth. I’d never had Filipino food before and was blown away at how good it was. The market is fairly close to where I live so I hope to go by there soon to try more of their goodies. A Filipino friend I know through Twitter says I have to try Lumpia, which are Filipino egg rolls.